Greener Electronics Lenovo Ranking - 10th Edition

Executive summary: Lenovo drops from 14th position to 16th as its score drops to of 3.7 points, mostly lost on the e-waste criteria. Lenovo now has a take-back programme in the US and reports a recycling rate of 2.16% of the weight of products shipped in 2007 and 7.74% of the weight of products shipped in 2000. However, Lenovo loses a point as almost 80% of that data is based on the amount of EU e-waste whose recycling was financed by Lenovo – by current market share – and may bear no relation to the amount of Lenovo branded e-waste actually recycled. It also loses a point for failing to provide information to individual customers about its take-back & recycling programme, which is mostly aimed at business customers, while its competitors continue to improve their services to individual customers.Lenovo scores well on most of the toxic chemical criteria. Although it has recently put on the market a monitor largely free of brominated flame retardants and PVC vinyl plastic, this one model is insufficient to score a point. It also needs to commit to the phase out of beryllium (including alloys and compounds), antimony and its compounds and all phthalates. Lenovo scores poorly on the energy criteria; it discloses greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from global operations in 2007, although these are not externally verified. It also scores points on energy efficiency, for having all global models of notebook, desktop and monitor introduced since the effective date of Energy Star 4 meeting the current Energy Star requirements, either in the basic models or as an option. However, Energy Star compliance is not supplied as standard for all models; for some models, customers can opt for non-Energy Star compliant PCs.